Here I am working away in what is undoubtedly the best (as in position, elevation, view and facilities) media room of any circuit in the country pondering what it is that draws me back to Invercargill’s Teretonga Park each and every year.
This year, as last, I have ventured south to the annual Evolution Motorsport Classic Speedfest to do my Fast Company media thing with the Archibald’s Historic Touring Car class. But there is more to it than that. And I don’t just mean in terms of doing my job. Because before that I’d be down at least once a year to do the same drum beating publicty work for the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series.
Before that it was to the annual ‘National Championships’ meeting where – over the years – I have worked for, let’s see; the Battery Town Porsche GT3 Cup Championship, Caltex NZV8 Touring Car team, BMW MINI Challenge, the Giltrap group-owned/International Motorsport-run TRS team, and the Toyota Racing Series (for the very first year when I shared the contract with my colleague Kate Gordon-Smith).
And before that?
One year I flew south when I was the nominal ‘manager’ of a young Scott Dixon’s Turners Car Auctions-backed Formula Holden team. And another, after I had traded my kart for a car for the first time I was part of an advance guard of North Island Formula Vee drivers who – as part of a profile-raising exercise – contested rounds of the national championship at Ruapuna and Teretonga.
A year later I was back and where I felt I should be, i.e. up front this time, behind the wheel of the Fuelstar RX7, (a car I set and held the class lap record at the track in for just shy of a year) and before that – way back when I was at Uni – I raced my XR250 Honda enduro bike in the single-cylinder class at a round of the national motorcycle road race championshisp at the track.
By now you’re probably getting sick of me using the same literary device to lead you into this week’s yarn, but don’t worry, I’m nearly finished.
Before that……………my Mum used to book day trips to the annual ‘Tasman Series’ meeting at the end of January with Gore bus operator Jenkins Motors (which is where I was first mesmerised by cars like Paul Fahey’s Cambridge-backed Mustang, the Tasman formula March 701 of Chris Amon and the McLaren M10 B then Leda LT27 of my hero at the time, Graham McRae.
Finally, before that ( I promise that’s the last one!) on my first ever visit to this most storied of tracks my 8 or 9-year-old mind was totally and utterly blown by the sound then sight of Ron Sylvester in his big, old Chev coupe tearing out of The Loop and on down to Castrol corner with a baying herd of other seriously modified Allcomers like Barry Vuyk’s Holden-engined Ford Prefect snapping at his heels.
With no other local reference point our long walk from the local camping ground through chest high lupins to eventually emerge within metres of the track was an absolute revelation, and the beginning though I obviously didn’t realise it at the time, of a life-long fascination with all things, fast, noisy and on two, three or four wheels.
Obviously it was not just me getting all wide-eyed at that meeting or any other for that matter around the country at the time because in talking to chaps of a similar vintage to myself at or about meetings like the Evolution Motorsport Classic Speedfest, a common denominator in terms of what got us hooked on our sport, is Formula 5000.
Whether it was the colour (STP Pink), the noise (unmuffled V8s), or the sheer ground-shaking, sphincter-tightening violence that assaulted all your senses as a full-field of the iconic stock-block V8-powered single-seaters accelerated away from their signature rolling starts it doesn’t really matter. There was just something about the cars and the category that appealed to impressionable young fellas like those born between – say – 1955 and 1965.
It probably doesn’t matter which track your ‘conversion’ was either initiated or made complete at. For some, for instance, it might have been at the long-closed Levin circuit, or the recently opened Manfeild Autocourse in Feilding. For others it could have been Pukekohe or Wigram. For me, though, it was Teretonga, so that’s another reason the track holds a special place in my heart.
It’s funny, too. In much the same way as distance is supposed to make said heart grow fonder the very fact that the track is at the opposite end of the country to where I have now lived for the greater part of my life adds a poignancy to my yearly trips there.
I have a similar kind of affection, for instance, for Pukekohe Park Raceway. But because it is just down the road, I treat it in a much more cavalier fashion. In fact the last time I rode or drove anything there must be at least 8-9 years ago, the nearby Hampton Downs and Evergreen Drift Park now my ‘go-to’ places when it comes to getting behind the wheel myself.
If I lived closer I’d no doubt see Teretonga in a similar light. Fortunately I don’t (live closer to the place) so I tend to view it in my mind’s eye as some sort of bucolic idyll.
It doesn’t help that I always have such a great time when I am ‘home,’ either, the hospitality I receive from cousins (and fellow petrolheads) Bryan and Kay, and Hadley and Caren MacKay, enough to remind me of what life was like before I packed up and headed north for a supposedly ‘better’ life all those years ago.
Sure, the sort of quick ‘cold-snap’ you can get at any time of the year when you live south of the 45th parallel, put a bit of a dampener (for a soft, now long-time, northerner like me anyway) on this year’s Evolution Motorsport Classic Speedfest meeting.
The locals, obviously, are used to it though, good friend and long-time local Teretonga press room buddy Lindsay Beer (only half!!) joking when he told me that if you want the weather to be hot, clear and fine on a Monday or Tuesday in Invercargill, you plan a motor racing meeting the weekend before so the wind and rain can blow itself out on the Saturday and Sunday……………
But I digress.
What draws me back to Teretonga at least once a year is the fact it is a special place. Not I’m, sure, to everyone who has ever gone there to race, spectate or do a job, but it is to me, because it’s somewhere where, over a period of (hell if I was 9 at the time I made my first visit there that makes it…) 50 years, I have invested a huge amount of my time, energy and emotion into.
Making it not just ‘a’ special place, but ‘my’ special place. And long may I keep going back!
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